Something must be wrong with media firm's customers

[bycomet]

Human player has media firms with higher quality and lower price but cannot defeat AI's firms?
See my 3 media firms, all have content quality of 70+ and rating points of 30%+, and CPM are only $3!
In contrast, AI's media firms have content quality of 60+ and rating points of 10-20%+, they charge CPM of $40+!
Then what? My media firms are almost at break-even. How can AI still get customers and make a profit? Price war means nothing for media firm?

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BTW, it calls rating points in radio and TV but market share in newspaper, is this inconsistence in the text?
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Saved game attached. Too big, divided into 2 parts. Or you can download it from my OneDrive:
https://1drv.ms/u/c/67ba928c653daddb/IQ ... A?e=86fqOA

BYC__004.part1.zip

(4 MiB) Downloaded 101 times

BYC__004.part2.zip

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[Karons]

I checked your save file. Your company is already maintaining 100% Advertiser Shares, including Local Advertisers.

The problem is that your media company alone cannot attract all the advertisements in that city, because the advertising share of your business is extremely high.

In this situation, the AI aims to profit by applying high CPM rates to the advertisements that you fail to attract.
(Also, $45 is by no means a high cost in the year 2076, considering that inflation is 3,800%.)

Always keep this in mind: if the AI is not trying to lower prices below yours, it is because you are unable to handle all of the demand.

Also, setting the CPM too low allows a single company to take up all of your advertising share. When a company chooses your TV station and sets its advertising budget to the maximum, your low rates cause the majority of the ad allocation to go to that company. This results in a shortage of your available supply.

With the CPM you set (3.40), and given that you do not have the Internet DLC, you would need more than 50 media companies to prevent other companies from making money.

When operating media companies, always maintain an appropriate CPM and keep at least two or more overlapping media companies. Lower is not always the correct answer.

[Karons]

Finally, in your save file, I added four more TV stations, radio stations, and newspaper companies each, and set their CPMs to 10% lower than the AI’s.

After that, the TV, radio, and newspaper media companies you had built immediately ranked 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in profitability. On the other hand, your rivals’ profitability dropped right away.

I then let the game run for seven years without changing anything else, and by that point, every rival company’s profitability had turned negative. In contrast, the additional media companies I built — four of each type — had all become profitable.

P.S. If your ratings and market share are high, it does not mean you have fully captured the market. It means your media companies are popular enough that you can set a higher CPM. ( More precisely, the company with the higher market share increases brand awareness more quickly. )

[bycomet]

When operating media companies, always maintain an appropriate CPM and keep at least two or more overlapping media companies. Lower is not always the correct answer.

Ah, naruhodo (I see). Media firms also have capacity limits, so they need to be built in large numbers like stores.